public interface GatheringByteChannel
extends WritableByteChannel

A channel that can write bytes from a sequence of buffers.

A gathering write operation writes, in a single invocation, a sequence of bytes from one or more of a given sequence of buffers. Gathering writes are often useful when implementing network protocols or file formats that, for example, group data into segments consisting of one or more fixed-length headers followed by a variable-length body. Similar scattering read operations are defined in the ScatteringByteChannel interface.

long write(ByteBuffer[] srcs,
           int offset,
           int length)
    throws IOException

Writes a sequence of bytes to this channel from a subsequence of the given buffers.

An attempt is made to write up to r bytes to this channel, where r is the total number of bytes remaining in the specified subsequence of the given buffer array, that is,

srcs[offset].remaining()
    + srcs[offset+1].remaining()
    + ... + srcs[offset+length-1].remaining()

at the moment that this method is invoked.

Suppose that a byte sequence of length n is written, where 0 <= n <= r. Up to the first srcs[offset].remaining() bytes of this sequence are written from buffer srcs[offset], up to the next srcs[offset+1].remaining() bytes are written from buffer srcs[offset+1], and so forth, until the entire byte sequence is written. As many bytes as possible are written from each buffer, hence the final position of each updated buffer, except the last updated buffer, is guaranteed to be equal to that buffer's limit.

Unless otherwise specified, a write operation will return only after writing all of the r requested bytes. Some types of channels, depending upon their state, may write only some of the bytes or possibly none at all. A socket channel in non-blocking mode, for example, cannot write any more bytes than are free in the socket's output buffer.

This method may be invoked at any time. If another thread has already initiated a write operation upon this channel, however, then an invocation of this method will block until the first operation is complete.

long write(ByteBuffer[] srcs)
    throws IOException

Writes a sequence of bytes to this channel from the given buffers.

An invocation of this method of the form c.write(srcs) behaves in exactly the same manner as the invocation

c.write(srcs, 0, srcs.length);